“For the first time in forever, he was stunned to silence. Not by her words, but by the tenderness in her hands, the worry in her eyes. He was an archangel. He’d been wounded far, far worse and shrugged it off. But then, there had been no woman with sun kissed by the sunset and eyes of storm gray to tear into him for daring to get himself hurt.”

“She felt Blake behind her, just where he’d been the first day they’d spoken. She wanted to tear out her heart and hand it to him, so he’d know she hadn’t meant to hurt him. But first she had to get them out of danger.”

“If the pirate with a scarf had been more poetically minded he’d have thought that her eyes were like a thousand emeralds, glittering in a far-off pirate treasure chest. But he wasn’t, so he just thought that she had really really green eyes, a bit like seaweed.”

“Then he kissed her again. When he licked her through the silk, she moaned. Catching the fabric, he tugged it aside and licked her again. “Hot … fuck, yeah, you’re hot.”Hope shuddered and fisted her hands in his hair again. But this time, she tugged him closer, gasping out his name.He smiled against her and then proceeded to do to her what she’d been doing to him from the first time he’d laid eyes on her—driving him out of his fucking mind.”

“She could see so much in those eyes: pain, vulnerability, and...something tender and soft as he looked at her. True, there was darkness, but it seemed more a result of what had been done to him than what he would do to others. The good in those eyes far outweighed the bad.”

“He hadn’t been her first lover or the first boy to give her an orgasm. He hadn’t even been the first she’d loved. He’d been the first to turn her inside out with something as simple as a smile. The first to make her doubt herself. He’d taken her deeper than anyone ever had, and yet she hadn’t drowned. ”